Friday, September 22, 2017

The Last Outlaw (HBO, 1993)

Seen worse

There have been quite a few Last
Outlaws. John Ford, no less, directed a 1919 silent of that title, Gary Cooper
was in a 1927 Paramount picture of the same name, Harry Carey Sr starred in a
1936 Christy Cabanne-directed RKO talkie. John Ford planned a post-war remake
of this Harry Carey one, and signed up Carey and John Wayne for the project,
but went for My Darling Clementine
instead. And in the 1980 there was a TV mini-series. In 2014 there would be a
Johnny Ringo/Bat Masterson The Last
Outlaw. So one way and another, the Last Outlaws were never really the
last. None of the above, however, had the same plot. They weren’t remakes. The
90s HBO offering was a Quantrillesque tale of ex-Confederates who can’t accept
that the war is ended (“The war ain’t never gonna be over,” says one) and
become outlaws, hitting “Yankee” banks. It’s New Mexico, 1873.

In fact they start with a bank raid. I
liked this bit because the bank manager has a hidden derringer, and you know
how I like derringer Westerns. The ruthless gang leader Graff discovers it and
asks scornfully, “What the hell is this?” But this derringer is destined to
play a key part in the last reel (if TV movies have reels). So that sent the
picture up in my estimation.

The gang was somehow expected in the
town and a large posse is ready to gun them all down in a Northfield/Wild Bunch way but Graff gets them out
by blowing up the bank with dynamite (only patented in 1867 so he got hold of
it pretty fast).

Bad guy

Mickey Rourke is Graff. Mr. Rourke plays
the bandit as more than half crazed and cold as ice. He wears a bandanna on his
head and this adds to his piratical appearance. The ‘good’ member of the gang,
who comes to reject Graff’s brutality (better late than never) is Eustis
(Dermot Mulroney, who had small parts in Bad
Girls, Young GunsandSunset). In
fact eventually Eustis shoots Graff when the leader is about to murder wounded gang
member Loomis (Daniel Quinn), who is slowing them down. The gang (which
includes Steve Buscemi) leave Graff for dead and ride off, with Eustis as their
new leader, heading by a roundabout route for Mexico.

Bad guy Rourke threatens (relatively) good guy Mulroney

The posse chasing them (which includes
Rourke’s brother Joey) is led by the equally ruthless Marshal Sharp (Gavan O’Herlihy)
who is blond (blond men are rarely goodies in Westerns) and a crack
long-distance shot with his rifle. He and his men, including Banker McLintock
(Richard Fancy) with an umbrella, are ready to do anything to track down the
Rebs and get their money back. And it turns out that Graff isn’t dead after
all, and he joins up with the posse to get his revenge on Eustis…

Steve is a Reb

Both gang and posse are riven by
internecine strife, and both are gradually reduced in numbers. The banker and
his money take a one-way trip off a cliff thanks to Graff. Finally the gang is
down to three, leader Eustis, a Deets-like Lovecraft (Keith David) and an
Edmond O’Brien/RG Armstrong-ish Potts (Ted Levine). Lovecraft has some
mumbo-jumbo with bones which he throws to foretell the future, and this future
doesn’t look too bright. Finally the gang remnants get to the Rio Grande,
within sight of safety but…

Lovecraft and Potts

Well, I can’t tell you any more without
a spoiler alert, and you wouldn’t want that. But I bet you can guess there will
be a Eustis/Graff one-on-one showdown, and you may not be wrong.

It’s 90s HBO so there are a few f-words
and such and the violence is quite violent. But it’s not Deadwood. It's a '15' now. The New Mexico locations are attractive, shot by Jack
Conroy, who worked on an episode of The Magnificent Seven TV series, in nice color.

The marshal is just as ruthless

The director was Geoff Murphy, who
directed the same episode of The
Magnificent Seven and also did Young
Guns. He keeps the pace up. It was writer Eric Red’s only Western. There
was one good line, when Potts looks across the Rio Grande and says, “That ain’t
Mexico. Where’s the women?”